Long-time readers of QSR are no doubt familiar with Barry Gibbons, former head of Burger King (among other restaurant concerns), who wrote the inimitable “Loaves & Fishes” column for five years. Barry ended his run with the magazine in December, but we so missed his sage and usually unconventional take on the business world that we’ve collected all his columns and will soon make them available via download from our web site.
To give you a taste, here’s Barry’s take on the form of corporate communication known as the “mission and values statement” and how it relates to leadership. We pick up the action as Barry has entered his new office at BK for the first time and encounters the previous owners’ statement, framed and hanging on the wall.
Have you ever read one of these things? They are full of split infinitives (“To boldly go...”). There are at least six adverbs per column inch. Tonally, they are arrogant and out of touch with reality. This particular one was so full of crap and humbug that, there and then, I invented a new language name: Crumbug.
Go and read your company’s. Look at those of other companies. If you can come up with a better name for the language, I will cede the floor to you. I know a bunch of top executives --- and many of them spend hours, days, weeks, word-smithing Crumbug. In their judgment it is vital that an assortment of corporate audiences, internal and external, understand the common goals and values of the organization. That might be true, but if it is, writing Crumbug is not a good use of a leader’s time. It is a good use of a hired-in English professor’s time. A leader’s job is to have a dream. To see future shapes that others don’t see --- shapes that will give the company winning distinction. The leader shouldn’t try to articulate these shapes --- they are best if they can be drawn in crayon. In the dreary world of 1950s clothing retailing, Luciano Benetton saw a different kind of clothes shop. He saw a shape that changed retailing forever. I suspect he never wrote it down.
The Leader then delegates to deliver the dream. You find the best people with the best skills you can. The Leader should keep refining the dream. The minute it is articulated, it is out of date. Five paragraphs of mission-specific Crumbug, framed and hung on the cafeteria restroom wall, is my idea of a suicide note.
Of course, the Leader has a wider role than to sit alone with a box of crayons. But that role moves away from what the company does, to how the company does it. It is through the leadership that we get a read on the character of the company. We see its personality, and find out what it stands for. Yes, these are its values. But these are not things you write down in Crumbug. These are things that people who work in or with the company see and hear every day. When a company treats a long-standing supplier like dirt --- bingo, there’s a value for all to see. When a company fires a twenty-year employee by e-mail, hey, guess what? --- there’s another one. If a company allows a management Hitler to rule a department by fear, it tells you all you need to know. If you can’t get a response to a customer query --- ditto. Values aren’t things you write down, they are things you do --- good and bad, all of you, in the company, every day. They are not things you read --- they are self-evident. Other people tell you what your values are.
The collection of Barry’s columns from QSR will be available in March 2006. For more info, contact Greg Sanders at greg@qsrmagazine.com.
